Archive: Issue No. 114, February 2007

04.02.07 Mustafa Maluka at Michael Stevenson
04.02.07 Corlie de Kock and Collin Albertus at Rust-en-Vrede
04.02.07 Jordan Tryon at João Ferreira
04.02.07 'Without Master' at the AVA
04.02.07 'Instorage' and 'Twogether' at 34Long
04.02.07 Norman O'Flynn at Bell-Roberts
04.02.07 Roelof Rossouw at Cape Gallery
04.02.07 Grada Djeri at Erdmann Contemporary
04.02.07 Linda Stupart at blank projects
04.02.07 'Three Artists' at Rose Korber Art
04.02.07 Sonja Wrethman at The Old Mill Gallery
04.02.07 Philippe Marinig at Alliance Française du Cap
04.02.07 'Room Travel' at what if the world...
04.02.07 Jason Klimatsas at blank projects
04.02.07 Gavin Rain at VEO
04.02.07 'Reflections of Cape Town' at Exposure

15.01.07 Wim Botha at Michael Stevenson
15.01.07 Eleonora Rossi at João Ferreira
15.01.07 Jacques Coetzer at Bell-Roberts
15.01.07 Beezy Bailey at Everard Read
15.01.07 'Enchanted' at what if the world...
15.01.07 David West at what if the world...
15.01.07 'Auction Exhaustion' at The Bin

3.12.06 Santu Mofokeng at Iziko SANG

5.11.06 'Embracing HIV/Aids' at Iziko SANG

1.09.06 'Memory and Magic' at the SANG

PAARL

04.02.07 'Artseasons 2007' at Santé Winelands

GREYTON

04.02.07 Jenny Groenewald at Scarlett Gallery
 

Mustafa Maluka this month follows up his previous solo of portraits at Michael Stevenson with new paintings. The exhibition marks a busy year: Maluka was selected to participate on the seventh São Paulo Bienal, he conducted a residency in northern Scotland and his work was included on a three-person show in Copenhagen. He will also be represented later this month at the Armory Show, the International Fair of New Art in New York.

Opens: February 15
Closes: March 17

Michael Stevenson Contemporary Gallery
Hill House, De Smidt Street, Green Point
Tel: (021) 421 2575
Fax: (021) 421 2578
www.michaelstevenson.com
Hours: Mon - Fri 9am - 5pm, Sat 10am - 1pmm

Corlie de Kock, an MA Fine Art graduate of Stellenbosch University, focuses on the political in personal or family relationships, which tells its own story. Her drawings and oil paintings are of subtle moments, or fragments, which the viewer can interpret drawing on their own experiences. De Kock uses a chiaroscuro drawing style that becomes a metaphor for the passing of time and history: marks are made, rubbed out and made again as history is written and re-written.

Alongside is a small exhibition of 15 photographic images on canvas by Collin Albertus, called 'Rituals of Love and Lust'.

Opens: 7pm, February 13
Closes: March 8

Rust-en-Vrede Gallery and Clay Museum
10 Wellington Road, Durbanville
Tel: (021) 976 4691
Email: rustenvrede@telkomsa.net
Hours: Mon - Fri 9am - 4.30pm, Sat 9am - 1pm

The notorious apartheid-era Minister of Police, Adriaan Vlok, received much publicity recently when he washed the feet of the Reverend Frank Chikane, among others. The issue of atonement is highly pertinent to South African society and has been the focus for the past two years of artist Jordan Tryon.

Tryon says in a statement: 'I am particularly interested in the necessary distinction between outward public actions and private attitudes, which are in themselves essentially impossible to verify or even ascertain. In an attempt to explore this distinction, aspects of my works are drawn from specifications imperative to ancient Old Testament rituals of atonement.'

Grain offerings were a consistent component of the atonement dynamic and comprised of only the finest white flour which, for that reason, is a recurring referent in the Tryon's work.

Opens: February 7
Closes: March 3

João Ferreira Gallery
70 Loop Street, Cape Town
Tel: (021) 423 5403
Fax: (021) 423 2136
Email: info@joaoferreiragallery.com
www.joaoferreiragallery.com
Hours: Tues - Fri 11am - 6pm, Sat 11am - 3pm

The main gallery of the AVA is this month host to a sculptural work by Lynette Bester together with a series of etchings by Eunice Geustyn in a joint show entitled 'Without Master'.

Bester's Le Marteau sans Maître (A Hammer without Master) takes its name from a 1955 composition by Pierre Boulez whose experiments with serial music used maths to create a predetermined series of values - including rhythm, volume and pitch. Bester's mechanised work, created from a disassembled stand-up piano, is inspired by this process.

Alongside, Eunice Geustyn exhibits a series of etchings that re-contextualises a variety of imagery stitched together within a landscape. Geustyn is interested in truth and interrogates the principles that govern existence and human behaviour.

In the Long gallery, Anthony Cawood exhibits a series of abstract landscape paintings imbued with the notion of transience through the use of light and colour. Upstairs Polly Alakija exhibits a series of works capturing the figure at rest in 'We Are Such As Dreams Are Made Of'.

Opens: January 22
Closes: February 9

AVA
35 Church Street, Cape Town
Tel: (021) 424 7436
Fax: (021) 423 2637
Email: avaart@iafrica.com
www.ava.co.za
Hours: Mon - Fri 10am - 5pm, Sat 10am - 1pm

Adrian Köhler deals with masculine identity by distorting aspects of self-representation in his small framed paintings at 34Long. His works show alongside other esteemed South African artists like William Kentridge and Marlene Dumas. Dumas' Fog of War series is particularly powerful and begins with an eloquent poetic lament, written in September 2006.

Some works exhibited last month (by Kentridge, Robert Hodgins and Paul du Toit) have left the gallery and been replaced by new ones. A limited number of editioned Takashi Murakami prints have been added to this group show, plus a fresh shipment of merchandise from the KaiKai Kiki studio.

The upstairs gallery will host a collection of works brought out from the gallery's cavernous storeroom. The collection will not be curated: the style is 'storage as presentation' for viewers to rifle through and find their own favourites.

Opens: February 6
Closes: March 3

34Long
34 Long Street, Cape Town
Tel: (021) 426 4594
Email: fineart@34long.com
www.34long.com
Hours: Tue - Fri 9am - 5pm, Sat 10am - 2pm

Normal O'Flynn returns to the Bell-Roberts Contemporary Gallery with his second solo show here called 'Never too late to be a man'. As the title indicates, O'Flynn investigates aspects of 'being a man' from the icons associated with masculinity to the ritual of becoming a man.

O'Flynn has recently returned to Cape Town following a three-month residency in Switzerland. He has travelled extensively throughout Africa attending residencies and workshops in Zambia, Egypt, Zimbabwe and Botswana.

Opens: February 7
Closes: March 3

Bell-Roberts Contemporary
89 Bree Street, Cape Town
Tel: (021) 422 1100
Fax: (021) 423 3135
Email: suzette@bell-roberts.com
www.bell-roberts.com
Hours: Mon - Fri 8.30am - 5.30pm, Sat 10am - 2pm

Roelof Rossouw exhibits a series of recent paintings at the Cape Gallery this month. Rossouw is a painter of figures, city and landscapes, street scenes, boats and harbours, architecture, parks and gardens. He works mainly in oils but also collage, acrylic and mixed media.

Rossouw states: 'The central theme of my painting has something to do with mood, light and colour. I try and create a particular atmosphere and sense of time. By reducing unnecessary detail I focus the attention on the shapes and juxtaposition of colour.'

Opens: 4.30pm, January 28
Closes: February 10

Cape Gallery
60 Church Street, Cape Town
Tel: (021) 423 5309
Email: web@capegallery.co.za
www.capegallery.co.za
Hours: Mon - Fri 9.30am - 5pm, Sat 9am - 1pm

Viewers have been warned to 'expect the unexpected' at the exhibition by photographer Grada Djeri. Aptly titled 'Show Time', this multi-media exhibition focuses on photography but also includes video art, paintings, silk screens, drawings, sculpture and footage of a recent live session with his Kolo Novo movie band.

The exhibition has another twist: the public will be invited to participate in a daily studio portrait session from 1 - 2pm in a makeshift studio in the gallery space. There will also be several live music sessions and film screenings over the exhibition's duration.

Djeri is an old-school photographer who prints all his own work while developing a signature 'brushed on developer' style.

Opens: January 31
Closes: February 25

Erdmann Contemporary
63 Shortmarket Street, Cape Town
Tel: (021) 422 2762
Email: photogallery@mweb.co.za
www.erdmanncontemporary.co.za
Hours: Tue - Fri 10am - 5pm, Sat 10am - 1pm

Michaelis MA student Linda Stupart takes her cue from an Elton John ballad in this exhibition entitled 'Don't let the Sun Go Down on Me'. She has converted the interior of blank project space into a lurid neon sunset which will shine out onto the street for the duration of the show.

Stupart's piece was inspired by the first evening of a brief love affair, which coincided with witnessing the smog-engulfing sunset in Johannesburg. Her realisation that the beauty of the sunset was intensified by the pollution in the air was the starting point for this work, which uses flourescent lighting as a symbol of sin, sex and excess. Speaking of which, there will be cocktails on opening night.

Opens: 7pm, February 9
Closes: February 24

blank projects
198 Buitengracht Street, Cape Town
Tel: 072 198 9221
Email: blankprojects@gmail.com
Hours: Wed 4pm - 7pm

Recent works by Deborah Bell, Robert Slingsby and Pamela Stretton are on view at Rose Korber Art in Camps Bay. Stretton, who graduated in 2005 with an MA from Michaelis School of Fine Art, continues her work with the female body. This latest series uses her signature style of digital inkjet prints, each reworked into large, life-size images of her body parts combined with media texts. The works break up into mosaic-type elements as the viewer is drawn closer.

Opens: January 15
Closes: February 28

Rose Korber Art
48 Sedgemoor Road, Camps Bay
Tel: (021) 438 9152
Fax: (021) 438 6262
Email: roskorb@icon.co.za
www.rosekorberart.com
Hours: Mon - Fri 9am - 5pm, weekends by appointment

The Old Mill Gallery at The Biscuit Mill complex in Woodstock is hosting an exhibition of photography by Sonja Wrethman, entitled 'Bullethole Sunrise: An exploration of memory'. A comment in the visitors' book sums up this exhibition succinctly: 'The best part, I think, is how your memories look a lot like mine feel. They are beautiful little feathery moments that stir up some fondnesses in my own past.'

Wrethman is based in Port Elizabeth, having graduated cum laude from the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in 2004. This is her first solo exhibition and this particular body of work is a digitally-based unmanipulated record of a trip to Croatia.

Opens: January 24
Closes: February 24

The Old Mill Gallery
373 Albert Road, Woodstock, Cape Town
Tel: 083 265 7804
Email: sandycof@mweb.co.za
Hours: Mon - Fri 10am - 4pm, Sat 9.30am - 12pm

Pleasure-seekers in today's world have a range of artificial highs to choose from but it is natural ecstasy - without any chemical ingredients - that interests photographer Philippe Marinig. His exhibition title, 'Natural Ecstasy', evokes pleasurable states of mind and his series of photographs aims to capture sensuous feelings of pleasure. This is achieved primarily through aerial photographs, where forms 'seem to slip and slide� Everything is in a continuous state of flux, an ebb and flow ready to meet.'

Marinig, who grew up in the south of France, has studied in Boston and worked in Paris. In 1992, he established a photographic studio in South Africa.

Opens: 6.30pm, February 8
Closes: March 14

Alliance Française du Cap
155 Loop Street, Cape Town
Tel: (021) 423 5699
Email: comm.cpt@alliance.org.za
Hours: Mon - Thu 9am - 6pm, Fri 9am -5pm, Sat 9am - 12pm

This exhibition of two-and three-dimensional drawings explores the physical and psychological aspects of journey. Artists Marna Hattingh and Jeanne Hoffman state: 'There is a direct correlation between travelling across a landscape and the path of a graphic mark which transforms a blank page into an imaginary space.'

The drawings, on paper or as objects, create imaginary spaces where the viewer 'may rediscover everything that is so normal and banal in everyday life'. Hoffman appropriates everyday objects, alters them, and literally cuts them into narrative threads to be rejoined into new compositions. Hattingh's characters enact everyday gestures 'in a play of daydreams and flights of fantasy that form a series of narrative constellations'.

Opens: January 31
Closes: February 17

what if the world...
Unit E102, The Old Biscuit Mill, 373 Albert Road, Woodstock
Tel: (021) 448 1438
Email: info@whatiftheworld.com
www.whatiftheworld.com
Hours: Mon - Fri 9.30am - 5.30pm, Sat 9am - 4pm

Jason Klimatsas, a Swiss artist, is currently completing a three-month residency organised by Pro Helvetia in Cape Town. He works with a variety of media from photography to painting, sculpture and installation. At blank projects, he has created 'a work which moves between sculpture and installation and that explores two- and three-dimensionality'.

Opens: February 28
Closes: March 17

blank projects
198 Buitengracht Street, Cape Town
Tel: 072 198 9221
Email: blankprojects@gmail.com
Hours: Wed 4pm - 7pm

In 'Global Currency', Gavin Rain uses an intricate, sculpted array of layers and colours to produce artworks that from a distance appear to be pure pattern. Upon closer inspection, these works turn out to be comprised of images of people.

Rain deliberately works with the resulting tension: 'I want to introduce this dialogue into my work - to force people to consider the notion of understanding the visual (and thereby society) at multiple levels. To voice the idea that one needs to remove oneself almost entirely from the literal in order to comprehend that which is subtle, but nevertheless intrinsic' says the artist in a statement.

Opens: 6pm, February 20
Closes: February 27

VEO Gallery
28 Jarvis Street, De Waterkant, Cape Town
Tel: (021) 421 3278
Email: info@veo.co.za
www.veo.co.za
Hours: Mon - Thu 10am - 5pm, Fri 10am - 4pm, Sat 10am - 2pm

Exposure Gallery, the relatively new photography exhibition space at the Old Biscuit Mill in Woodstock, is hosting an exhibition by Robin Sprong this month. His show entitled 'Reflections of Cape Town' is billed as 'a kaleidoscopic journey through Cape Town, from the Bo-Kaap to the Mount Nelson'.

Opens: January 25

Closes: February 15

Exposure Gallery
Shop E101, The Old Biscuit Mill, Albert Road Woodstock
Tel: (021) 447 4124
Email: exposuregallery@zsd.co.za
Hours: Mon - Fri 9am - 4.30pm, Sat 9.30am - 4pm

Artist Wim Botha exhibits the much anticipated follow-up to his previous solo at Michael Stevenson ('Cold Fusion') in a show called 'Apocalagnosia'. The title is a neologism formed from the combination of 'apocalypse' and 'agnosia', which gives an indication of its aims: Botha points to our inability to truly possess knowledge about the world even as it reveals itself to us.

Botha's work draws on art historical and popular religious prototypes, bringing together contradictory and incongruent elements to exemplify a recurrent concern with morality and mortality, according to Michael Stevenson Gallery. 'His installations often appear to depict the aftermath of a devastating and climactic sequence of events, yet he presents only extracts and abstracted moments of situations rather than elucidating circumstances. It is in his choice of materials that meaning is invariably embedded: the associations of, for example artificial marble, gilt, maize meal, burnt wood and anthracite offer intimations of his engagement with the particularities of his - and our - contemporary world.'

Opens: 6pm, January 11
Closes: February 10

Michael Stevenson Contemporary Gallery
Hill House, De Smidt Street, Green Point
Tel: (021) 421 2575
Fax: (021) 421 2578
www.michaelstevenson.com
Hours: Mon - Fri 9am - 5pm, Sat 10am - 1pmm

Italian artist Eleonora Rossi lives and works between Milano and La Spezia. She describes her Cape Town exhibition, 'Oblio', by quoting Italian poet Pier Paolo Pasolini: 'Beast dressed as a man - child sent alone around the world, with his coat and his few cent, heroic and ridiculous I'm also going at work. To survive...'

Rossi writes in her statement: '[Pasolini's] cruel and hard work about the people and children of the Italian suburbs has influenced the works for this exhibition� Inside his verses there is everything I can say. Or even better, all I can paint.'

Opens: 6pm, January 17
Closes: February 3

Pretoria-based artist Jacques Coetzer offers viewers a more nuanced critique of mass culture in his latest exhibition at Bell-Roberts, entitled 'Alt pop'. The gallery says the show will expand on Coetzer's personal mantra: 'Art inspired by doubt, faith and survival in the middle lane. What an absurd notion - to think that anything can be alternative and popular at the same time.'

Opens: 4.30pm, January 10
Closes: February 3

An exhibition of current works by Beezy Bailey is hosted by Everard Read Gallery next month, featuring guest artist Joyce Ntobe. It follows an ongoing exhibition of paintings and sculpture from South Africa and abroad, featuring artists like John Meyer, Ricky Dyaloyi, Sasha Hartslief, Velaphi Mzimba (who in December showed new portraits) and James Mooney.

Opens: February 15
Closes: March 1

'Enchanted', a collaborative exhibition by Lisa Firer and Marlise Keith, attempts to include the viewer in a daily narrative described as 'a journey of discovery and celebration of beauty'. The artists use drawn images and words which they collect from their working processes and daily lives. They incorporate these into fragile intimate narratives of porcelain and light, the surfaces layered with mark, texture, cut-outs and colour. The artworks comprise tea lights and porcelain tile 'prayer lights' that extend from the ceiling.

Opens: 5pm, January 10
Closes: 4pm, February 3

Young successful fashion designer David West this month exhibits 'the iconic EVOL poster series' at what if the world... The series of photographs will be familiar to Capetonians from pillarboxes, walls and lamposts around the City Bowl.

Opens: January 19
Closes: February 17

The Bin is holding a 'concept exhibition' where bidding for works on show will start at R50 and escalate in increments of R100. The buyer with the highest bid at the end of the exhibition will claim the work. Artists likely to participate include Warren Lewis, Brandt Botes, Love& Hate and others.

Opens: January 21
Closes: February 8

A survey show called 'Invoice' of the work of photographer Santu Mofokeng at Iziko SANG includes photographs from nearly all his major bodies of work produced between 1982 and 2006. The exhibition is hosted in partnership with Gallery Momo in Johannesburg and Autograph ABP in London.

Mofokeng began working as a street photographer and in the mid-80s he joined the Afripix Collective agency. Pam Warne, curator of photography and new media at SANG, says of his work: 'From an early stage, Mofokeng exhibited an independent approach and produced images that refuse to be overtly political but nonetheless contain a fundamental political dimension.'

Mofokeng has held solo shows in Johannesburg and London and recently participated in the international exhibition 'Africa Remix' as well as Beijing's Forbidden City International Photography Festival. He has received numerous awards and exhibited extensively in Europe and elsewhere.

Opens: December 2
Closes: May 2, 2007

'Embracing HIV/Aids', which opens on International Aids Day, showcases a substantial body of new work around the impact of HIV/Aids on the country. Artists featured include Kim Berman, David Goldblatt, Churchill Madikida, Berni Searle, Clive van den Berg, Diane Victor and Zapiro, and media range from photography to sculpture, paintings and drawings. Works previously acquired (Goldblatt, Gideon Mendel, Penny Siopis and Hentie van der Merwe) are also included.

Says Iziko SANG of the exhibition: 'As with many previous projects, the exhibition Embracing HIV/Aids will be a point of departure for education programmes and special walkabouts. It will draw NGOs into our work and vision and sensitise visitors to the challenges we face in South Africa.'

Opens: December 1

A retrospective selection of 82 of the best works produced by seven artists from the !Xun and Khwe Cultural Project in the private collection of Hella Rabbethge-Schiller of Rosenheim, Germany, is on show at the SANG this month. Entitled 'Memory and Magic' the works on paper and canvas span the period from the inception of the project in 1994 until the present.

Rabbethge-Schiller inherited a farm near Kimberley in the 1970s and built up a visual archive of over 400 works from the !Xun and Khwe artists in an nearby community. The collection is regarded as the largest and most comprehensive of such art in existence and has until now resided outside South Africa.

Opens: September 23
Closes: Febraury 28

Paarl gets a dash of glamour this month as Prince Franz von Auersperg stops by to open an exhibition of which he is a patron. 'Artseasons 2007' at Santé Winelands boasts over 80 works by contemporary artists largely from Germany, Switzerland and South Africa. Local names include Roger Ballen, Lien Botha, Brendhan Dickerson, Terry Kurgan, Johann Louw, Themba Shibase, Bronwen Vaughan-Evans, Karlien de Villiers and Manfred Zylla.

Opens: February 4
Closes: March 4

Jenny Groenewald exhibits a series of paintings of Karoo Landscapes this month at Greyton's Scarlett Gallery. She is a full-time painter now based in Swellendam, following a career in the advertising industry as partner and director of Hunt Lascaris. Groenewald is busy working on a series of portraits for an international exhibition and four of her landscape Farm Gate series have been snapped up for the Tuynhuis permanent collection.

Opens: February 2
Closes: February 27